


It's a little bit funny (this feeling inside)

by Rixesppha



Series: UraIchi Week 2019 [1]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, No Beta, UraIchi Week 2019
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 13:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18895723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rixesppha/pseuds/Rixesppha
Summary: Kurosaki Ichigo grows up wanting to be a doctor, wants to patch people back up and send them out his door hale and healthy. Everything shifts one step to the right, but at the same time it doesn't.(UraIchi Week 2019 - Canon Divergence)





	It's a little bit funny (this feeling inside)

Ichigo Kurosaki is a gentle boy. Soft in face, chubby cheeks, warm brown eyes that often fill with tears as he clings to his mother. He is 7, 8, attends karate lessons with his scary friend Tatsuki and doesn’t like it all that much but his mom suggested it so he keeps going. When he grows up, he wants to be a superhero! So he can protect his baby sisters and his mom and his dad, and his mom will always call him her little protector and give him lots of hugs as rewards!

Ichigo Kurosaki is a sad boy. Same soft face, same chubby cheeks starting to cave in, heavy brown eyes filled with tears that do not fall. There is no mother to cling to, no father to confide in. His baby sisters don’t understand what’s going on. He is 9 and has lost his mother and it is all his fault but he doesn’t know how. He just knows it is. When he grows up, he wants to be a doctor. He wants to be able to save people from death and send them back home to their families, like he wished someone had done for him.

\---

He is 10, 11. He meets new people and studies hard even though he is only in middle school. He fights off people who make fun of his hair color but sticks around to make certain they get back up again afterwards. 

He is 12, 13, 14. He studies and studies and learns everything he can get his hands on. His dad laughs at his enthusiasm but doesn’t curb it, allows Ichigo into the clinic and shows him how to stitch together skin, how to set minor fractures and take care of flues and fevers. Ichigo gets a lot of practice taking care of minor wounds when Karin joins the local soccer team and comes home with skinned knees and bruised arms; when Yuzu starts trying to learn to cook and burns her hands. It’s worth it.

He is 15 and for some reason, there is a girl in his room. And then there is a monster, and his sisters are in danger - it all blurs together afterwards, but he’ll figure it out. Fighting with a giant cleaver is strange and doesn’t quite feel right, beyond being anachronistic. He’ll figure it out.

There are all sorts of trials, tribulations - he meets some really, really weird people and fights monsters. He watches his classmates gather together around him and fight with him and decides these people need me just like his sisters do, and he studies their powers so different from his own: Chad and his arms, Orihime’s magical pins, Ishida’s glowy bow bracelet. 

(“How do you make it appear?” Ishida is staring at him, frowning, thinking. Ichigo waits. He’s been wanting an answer for a while now - how does the bracelet go from being jewelry to being a bow? How does he create arrows?  
“Quincy all have impeccable control, Kurosaki. Not that you would know what that means.”  
He ignores the jab. Ishida doesn’t always mean it, and anyways, he knows deflection when he sees it. Control, huh?)

Entering the Soul Society is like having blinders ripped off. There is so much to learn. He tries his best not to be too enthusiastic when around Hanataro but he’s not certain he succeeds, since the boy looks even more terrified of him afterwards.

Oh, and Unohana-sensei. He’s decided he wants to be her when he grows up. Competent, serene, a good healer and strong? His new role model. (He tells Rukia this when he is meeting up with her after everything has gone down, and for some reason her white haired Captain chokes on air at his declaration. Weird.)

(Juushiro is trying desperately not to think about what an already powerful Kurosaki Ichigo would be like with Unohana as his teacher. It’s too monstrous to imagine.)

\---

Urahara is kneeling before him, head bowed, hat to one side. Apologizing. Ichigo forgives him, but -  
“Keep teaching me. If I’m going to get dragged into this, I want to be prepared.”

Urahara stares, startled. Ichigo has read a lot of psychology books, trying to figure out what he wanted to specialize in when he was older and in university. He knows Urahara will shoulder the blame for many things, some even that aren’t his fault. He’s got a lot of markers for that sort of martyr-style personality. (Ichigo does as well, but if he’s aware of them, then he’s less likely to fall into them. Right?)

“If you wish, Kurosaki-san?” The fan Urahara is always carrying has popped out of nowhere and is fluttering in front of his face. Deflection, again. 

Ichigo wishes he could look at people without dissecting their ticks and tells sometimes, damnit.

\---

Sand billows everywhere. Attempting to regulate his breathing, Ichigo blurs out of the way of the next slash from Urahara’s zanpakuto. He’s been dodging for what feels like forever, attempting to hide his presence from the shopkeeper long enough to draw his own sword. It’s...not going great.

\---

Dodge, dodge, shunpo, dodge. Repeat. He regrets asking Urahara to teach him Kido for a brief moment but then can’t focus on anything else or risks getting himself chopped in half.

\---

“You’ve done admirably, Kurosaki-san.” Urahara is barely sweating, still smiling his usual smile. Ichigo, panting heavily and feeling like he was just dunked in a vat of sweat, glares without heat.  
“Sure.”

Urahara wanders over and when Ichigo fails to move, laughs somewhat.  
“You’ve pushed yourself past your limits again. You really should take better care of yourself, Kurosaki-san.”

The teenager gears up to retort - he does take good care of himself, damnit all! He eats a healthy diet geared towards protein and carbs to replace everything he frequently loses even in spirit form, he drinks his weight in water, he even makes certain to get 8 hours of sleep a night and take breaks to think about different things! He’s more functional than anyone else he knows! - but stops with his mouth open when Urahara slings one his arms over the other man's shoulder and heaves him upwards without the slightest thing to indicate it might be difficult to move Ichigo’s dead weight body.

Of course, Ichigo knows that he can't hide from his emotions forever. He's only 15 (looking at everything that has happened to him recently makes this statement very mind boggling. He tries not to think about it too much, or he'll start self diagnosing and he knows that road only leads to pain.) and still trapped in the ridiculous cycle of puberty, it was a given he would have to deal with hormones at some point. He did wish they had chosen to appear at a less horrible time, however. When he's probably going to be fighting for his life for the unknown future against people who are hundreds of years older than him? Bad time to discover he likes men. Very, very bad time.

“Still can’t hide from you.” He finally says.

They walk, well, Urahara walks and Ichigo stumbles as his legs protest immensely, for several quiet seconds.

“I am much better at sensing reiatsu than the average shinigami, Kurosaki-san. I would say you are at the level of an average Academy student by this point, and after only one week of training.”

There is a uncomfortable sort of quiet awe in Urahara’s voice, that Ichigo isn’t certain he was supposed to hear. He squirms, feels his cheeks heat a little.

“I can still do better.” 

Urahara huffs and Ichigo sees the faintest glimpse of a smile in the corner of his mouth.

“Of course.”  
\---

There is more fighting, because of course there is. Ichigo meets the Visored, and then he meets his own Hollow and that is an experience he isn’t certain how to categorize. He fights some crazy Arrancar, almost dies. Orihime is kidnapped and he loses his temper a little - (A thousand years of experience and they’re just going to let someone with the power to reverse time hang out with a psychopath it’s like they’ve never heard of Stockholm Syndrome or captor bonding) - and then breaks into another world, go figure. Fights some more crazy Arrancar, fights and fights and fights until it’s the last moment and he’s being told by his dad that there is nothing left for him to do except sacrifice himself. To rip apart his soul like it’s no big deal and take down a man that he’s got no real personal hatred for. To fight the final fight in a war that he should never have been dragged into.

But he does, because there are people he cares for tangled in this now. There is the ever present knowledge that Karin and Yuzu are in constant danger. Rukia and Renji, Chad, Uryuu, Orihime, Urahara, Shinji and the others...People he’s known for years mixed with people he’s just met, and this will remove the threat that looms over them for good.

Ichigo walks to that future, knows he’ll come out of it broken and changed. He rips his soul his half to protect the people most precious to him and then - 

They walk away.

\--

 

Ichigo is 17. He is thin but wiry, and his brown eyes are cold and sad. He studies and studies and studies for lack of anything else to do, lack of anyone to talk to. He ignores the constant ache in his chest, ignores the silence in his head, ignores the emptiness of the space around him.

He is walking home from school. Alone, as always now a days, and he rounds a corner. A group of thugs of various ages lean against the wall, smoking and chatting. He passes them.

“Oh, hey, Kurosaki!”

He pauses, looks. He doesn’t recognize the face of the man who called out his name.

“Haha, you still have that hair, I knew it was you!”

What a stupid statement. Of course he still has his hair. It grows out of his head.

“You still good at patching people up, man?”

Ichigo blinks and categorizes the mans appearance. He doesn’t look visibly injured.

“Why are you asking?” His voice is very raspy and his throat sore. When was the last time he actually spoke to someone?

The man shuffles, as do the rest of the thugs around them. None of them look bad off, but Ichigo can’t place their faces though he feels like he should.

“Well, uh...Our old doc got kicked to the curb for selling on the side.” The man scratches at his hair awkwardly. “Boss is looking for someone to replace him and everyone in Karakura knows that you’re good at fighting but also at putting people back together from it if they ask nice.”

He’s...being interviewed? Job scouted? By a thug he’s certain he’s beaten up before, for a gang in need of a doctor, just because he used to patch up the people he beat up if they apologized with enough sincerity.

What the fuck, why not. 

\---

Kisuke is many things, not all of them nice, but when he puts his mind to something he damn well accomplishes it. Months of sleepless nights, of tearing his hair out when things didn’t line up correctly, of punishing himself for what he did and didn’t do - but here it is, the weapon that will return Kurosaki Ichigo’s powers to him, laying on the table. Kisuke rubs at his eyes, tired and exhausted and weary down to his bones.

Isshin may have told everyone to stay away, may have looked Kisuke in the face and told him that Ichigo didn’t deserve to be constantly reminded of what he had lost, but Kisuke had never taken orders well. Especially not from Isshin, and especially not when they were stupid. 

So he had gone looking, and what he had seen...Kisuke wasn’t certain how to put into words the feelings it wrought inside him, wasn’t certain how to categorize the whirl of guilt knotting up inside his chest. 

Seeing Ichigo - seeing his student who had faced monsters and gods and Hell and everything in between without faltering, without flinching - seeing him bend and wilt over the months as everyone he knew left him alone (behind).... Another thing Kisuke adds to his list of things to make up for. At this point the list is mainly just ‘Make Kurosaki Ichigo’s life easier’, which is simpler to keep track of then the multiple offences Kisuke has managed to commit against the younger man. 

A yawn cracks his jaw and Kisuke stumbles from his seat. He’s not entirely certain how long he’s been down in this lab, putting the final perfections upon the sword. He had thought, once, that he would need help - but he had looked at the Gotei 13, at the Central 46 and their reactions to past events and decided that no, he could figure out a way to do this alone. There was no reason to make Ichigo wait even more.

**Author's Note:**

> do i have more of this?? maybe  
> do i know where i'm going with it? HAH im not capable of planning  
> also my attempt to copy japanese societal cues and such are based off fairly limited research and listening to my best friend yell about their classes. pls be kind.


End file.
